


humbled waters

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Art, Cover Art, Digital Art, Ficlet, Gen, Lusus, Post-Apocalypse, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 18:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14795432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Roxy was not there, when the Condesce was destined to strike the final blow. She wasn't there when the fish queen found herself unable to permanently end her favored foe.Roxy didn't see, how the empress transformed her mother, into a frightening beast.She didn't get to watch, as the lamenting, ruthless empress, bade her rival a final string of curses.She doesn't know that out there, somewhere, is a boy in a tower with an ocean for a moat.There is much, that Roxy doesn't know.





	humbled waters

**Author's Note:**

> ( an anon prompt from my inbox )

 

Roxy spends most of her day on the surface of the sea, astride the back of her catmom, gripping the soft white fur through wave after wave has helped her bulk up over the years.

Catmom is also good at hunting; her long tentacles easily ensnare and rend apart fresh meat for Roxy to munch. On rare days, when catmom tires of swimming, or Roxy starts feeling particularly nostalgic for a world full of people she never got to meet, catmom will lead Roxy ashore to play in intertidal tidepools; Roxy enjoys the change of scenery & the different selections in snacks.

The shores are far and few between; a rare treat in their watered world. 

Roxy loves the tidepools; they always reminded her of the day her catmom rose up from the depths to cradle her, pull her out of the waters where she had submerged for far too long, swam her to shore, layed her out in the landlocked puddle and watched over her as she gasped in her first fateful breaths. she’s since gotten used to the stong of the salt and the sun on her back, the chill of the water, and feeling of floating underneath currents and waves, but can always see the tension ease off of her catmom’s whispers when they rest on the rocks. They don’t get long however, Roxy can count the low tides she had on one hand; as soon as the sun sets and seas flood up to meet them, catmom huffs and clicks and runs her back into the sea.    

Roxy has no idea where it is that catmom is taking them, over the years of crossing the oceans vast waters. But lately, Roxy’s beginning to see… _things_ , in the distance. Things thatdon'tt look like mountains or rocks or her mother’s gleaming white tentacles. They look large and cleanly cut; crisscrossing branches of solidness and strangely sheened coloration under layers of sea salt and courageous barnacles. She’s certain that whatever they were, they were from a time  _before_ the rising waters. 

She knows in her bones that her real mother has been gone longer than the waters she’s treading have been churning, and no amount of her fallen tears or whispered prayers, or wailing laments at the vast, belittling, heavens in the night sky can change that -though her lusus knows she’s tried; and she can't help but feel, that her catmom is  _looking_ for something, out in the strange waters.

Maybe, Roxy hopes, some _one_.

The idea that there might be someone, anyone, out there or any _thing_ was somewhere out in the unending sea gave roxy the same sort of dizzy feeling she had whenever she looks at the stars.

The stars are her main source of entertainment; a nightly serenade of pin-prick lights dancing and darting across the edgeless sky.

She makes up stories about the stars, long epics of stars strung together with imaginary lines and names for words she didn’t know how to pronounce or describe other than with the clicks and trills of her lusus. She swears some nights, as the ebbing motions lull her, that fishcat actually begins to speak. not in any language she can understand, but in syllables and rolled vowels, as if the beast listened to roxy’s chatter and in solidarity, attempted to mimic it; distortion and ill-understanding a roadblock in interspecies communication. 

By the light of day, Roxy disregarded such whims of fancy; but the strange intensity, in her catmom’s eyes, was nothing like what she could see in the eyes of the other beasts surfing the waves. 

She wondered, often, if her mother had such an intensity in her eyes, back in the time before the world came to a watery end. 


End file.
